Albany County jail maxes out with 100 more ICE detainees

Immigrant men are escorted off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jet from Arizona at Albany International Airport during their transport to Albany County Jail on Thursday afternoon, June 28, 2018, in Colonie, N.Y. The jail has taken in 235 immigrant men who are being detained on immigration charges. (Will Waldron/Times Union)

Will Waldron

Immigrant men are escorted off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jet from Arizona at Albany International Airport during their transport to Albany County Jail on Thursday afternoon, June 28, 2018, in Colonie, N.Y. The jail has taken in 235 immigrant men who are being detained on immigration charges. (Will Waldron/Times Union)

Will Waldron

Immigrant men are escorted off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jet from Arizona at Albany International Airport during their transport to Albany County Jail on Thursday afternoon, June 28, 2018, in Colonie, N.Y. The jail has taken in 235 immigrant men who are being detained on immigration charges. (Will Waldron/Times Union)

Will Waldron

Immigrant men are escorted off a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jet from Arizona at Albany International Airport during their transport to Albany County Jail on Thursday afternoon, June 28, 2018, in Colonie, N.Y. The jail has taken in 235 immigrant men who are being detained on immigration charges. (Will Waldron/Times Union)

Will Waldron

A jet charted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lands at Albany International Airport during a transport of immigrant men to Albany County Jail on Thursday afternoon, June 28, 2018, in Colonie, N.Y. The jail has taken in 235 immigrant men who are being detained on immigration charges. (Will Waldron/Times Union)

COLONIE – The Albany County jail on Thursday received another 100 men who were detained on immigration charges at the U.S. border, and the jail is now maxed out with 330 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees, Sheriff Craig Apple said Friday.

Apple said last week that the 1,040-bed jail had contracted with ICE to help house immigrants arrested on "low-level" offenses. He said the county receives $119 per day for each detainee and they are being held in air-conditioned areas of the jail that are separated from the general population.

“These aren’t your typical inmates. The reality is they really shouldn’t be inmates at all,” Apple said. “When you go in, they’re all smiling and happy. I chatted with a couple that could speak English.”

Sarah Rogerson, an Albany Law School professor and director of the school’s immigration law clinic, said, “many of the detainees were federally prosecuted for an unlawful entry,” even those who had presented themselves at a legal portal of entry.

Officials at Albany Law School, in conjunction with the nonprofit Legal Project, are providing the immigrants with legal representation and translators, and more volunteer attorneys and interpreters have traveled to the jail from across the state. Rogerson said the effort to assist the immigrants is part of a statewide effort to recruit attorneys, law school students and interpreters. Apple said over 300 attorneys and interpreters have volunteered to help interview the immigrants to ascertain their status.

Many of the men held at the Albany jail have not had their credible-fear interviews with U.S. immigration officials, which are required to determine if they may have a right to asylum in the United States.

Rogerson said incarceration of the immigrants is not required and federal programs in which immigrants without legal status are paired with case managers — who help keep them on track with scheduled hearings and immigration procedures — have been successful in ensuring that immigrants do not abscond.

"There are alternatives to detention," she told the Times Union last week.

Apple said he and his staff are doing what they can to ensure the detainees are treated well and get due process.

“When you see these people get off of a plane, obviously dirty, some sickly … this is 2018, we’re in the greatest country in the world and we can treat people a little better,” he said. “We’re showing people Albany County is a compassionate county, and I think we can set an example.”

The day after the arrival of new detainees, protests against ICE led to a closure of the agency’s Latham office on Friday.

Beginning at 7 a.m., at least 150 people went to the local U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office throughout the day to speak out against the agency and call for its abolition.

"Our goal was to show folks who come to this office that they're not alone," said Sean Collins, a member of ICE-Free Capital District. "ICE and immigration protocols in effect right now are still actively tearing families apart."

In a press statement, Public Affairs Officer Anita Rios Moore said the agency closed the Latham site for safety purposes "in accordance with office policy."

"What these demonstrators may not realize," the statement continued, "is that they are actually hurting the people they are trying to help when their actions prevent immigration officers from doing their jobs, adjudicating benefits for those who have applied and now are unable to attend their scheduled appointments."

Collins said the accusation that demonstrators are hurting immigrants is bogus, saying that the office could have continued its work.

"I've been here since 7 a.m and seen at least 30 folks coming in and out trying to make their appointments, and they were never notified that they were going to have to reschedule," he said. "It just shows that they don't have any regard to the humanity of these folks who are just trying to live and support their families."

Massarah Mikati covers communities of color and breaking news for the Times Union. She was previously a state reporter for Johnson Newspaper Corp., covering the New York State Legislature for 10 counties in the Hudson Valley, Western New York and North Country. From 2017-2019, Massarah was a Hearst Fellow reporting on immigrants and refugees for the Times Union, then communities of color for the Houston Chronicle. Massarah graduated from The Ohio State University in 2017 with a B.A. in journalism, Middle East studies and Francophone studies.Follow her on Twitter and send tips to mmikati@timesunion.com.